salugi

English

Etymology 1

See Saluki.

Noun

salugi (plural salugis)

1. Alternative spelling of Saluki (“a breed of hound originating in the Middle East”)
   • 1931, Ernest Wallis Budge, Egyptian Tales and Romances, page 119:

     And when the boy had grown up, he went up on the roof of his house and he saw a salūgī (i.e. greyhound or hunting dog) which was following a man who was walking on the highway.

   • 1939, Thomas Edward Lawrence, The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, page 159:

     He had four Salugis, all hairless ones, of a biscuit colour, very large to my eyes. I measured them and they were from 22-24 inches high, very ugly dogs, of the slinking type

   • 1941, Cyrus H. Gordon, The Living Past, page 75:

     An animal appearing frequently on these seals was the salugi. It is a dog of the greyhound type still common in the Near East. Fortunately for the salugi, it is not classed as a dog in Arabic.

Etymology 2

Unknown. Attested in print from the 1950s; likely used earlier.

Alternative forms

• saloogie, sloogie
• saluggi, salugie

Noun

salugi (uncountable)

1. (informal, US, New York) A keep-away game in which children throw around an object with the aim of keeping it away from a particular child (often the owner of the object) or from another group of children; keepings off.

   Synonyms: keep-away, monkey in the middle, piggy in the middle

   • 1956, Gerald Green, The Last Angry Man, page 193:

     They had seized the tan derby of one of their number; three others in sharp suits and silk waistcoats were tossing it around in a wild game of salugi.

   • 1966, Jay Neugeboren, Big Man‎^[1], page 55:

     Then he grabs a hat off Jim, a guy about my age who never says anything, and they all playing saloogie around him with it like a bunch of kids.

   • 1995, August Kleinzahler, “The Old Schoolyard in August”, in The American Poetry Review, volume 24, page 24:

     the taste of pencils and Louis Bocca's ear / torn off by the fence in a game of salugi.